either in the loop or under a rolling log, but Henry expected him to be quick, to use his head, and he wasn’t going to let him or the job get the better of him.
Flynn stood on the truck’s seat and watched him out the rear window. He sometimes shouted to him, calling out Hey! or something similar when he slipped over, but other than that he kept still in the seat. He’d already learnt to keep right out of Henry’s way. The window was about the same shape as a movie screen but Flynn’s fingers were hanging out of this one, unrestrained by the rules of coloured film and light, and Henry’s scarred arm and big hand came right out to work the winch. The last time they’d gone to the movies in Laurence the woman hadn’t let him and Flynn in because of their bare feet and they’d had to sit for an hour and a half, staring at their tickets, distraught, until their mother returned, and then she’d gone to the woman and given her one hell of a blast. He smiled at the memory, but then put it from his head in case it distracted him.
‘Wait there,’ ordered Henry. Tom, surprised, watched the truck disappear down the track, Flynn’s face a pale oval in the window, to where they’d taken the other logs, to where the jinker would pick them up later. He wondered whether Wait there was Henry’s way of saying he’d done a good job and he should have a break, or that he was completely useless. He sat down under a tree to wait, suddenly feeling a little lonely.
Henry had been gone a long time the night before. Tom had given up waiting for him. He’d gone and lain on his bed, listening to the world outside the house, but had fallen asleep, and only later been woken by the sound of the truck returning, Henry’s steady footsteps through the house, all the energy drained away, all the fury. Whatever had happened, whatever he’d said or done at the Steeles’, he didn’t say. Then, outside in the night, a real storm had brewed, just the faint sound of thunder at first, slowly moving closer, becoming louder, until the house was shuddering, until he’d worried about his mother having to come home through it. The lightning had flashed through the window and then the rain, great sheets of it, had come crashing down on the roof for half an hour, maybe three-quarters, and then it had gone, waltzing away down the valley, leaving the drains gurgling and the air cool and clean. He’d heard the floorboards creak as Henry walked out to the verandah. He’d pictured him standing out there on the step in his singlet, watching the storm go, maybe smoking one of the bent Marlboros. In the last flickers of light through the window he’d seen Flynn in his bed across the room, his mouth a dark O in his face, oblivious to it all.
There’d been no black eyes in the morning light, no grazes on Henry’s knuckles which hadn’t been there before, but there had been silence and an understanding on Tom’s part that he should not mention anything to do with the night before, especially not in front of his mother, whom he hadn’t even heard come home. Tom hadn’t even dreamt of it.
When Henry returned he jumped down from the truck and proceeded to build a little fire of twigs and bark to boil the billy on. A breeze picked up and blew the firesmoke away through the trees. When the tea was made he opened a tin of biscuits and passed two each to Tom and Flynn. Tom went and sat with his back against the cool trunk of a young bluegum and watched Flynn mess about chasing big red bull ants with a stick. He daydreamed about taking off his shoes and putting his feet in cool creek water. Henry had made both of them wear their school shoes to stop splinters. Tom hardly ever wore his except on special occasions and they were black and shiny and stiff and made his feet feel clumsy and heavy. They hurt his heels but it was worse for Flynn – he’d never worn his. Henry said that that was all the more reason Flynn should wear them in before he started school. Tom tried to tell him that hardly anyone wore shoes there but Henry hadn’t seemed to hear him.
‘Be careful with those bloody things, Flynn,’ Tom said when Henry went behind a tree to piss. ‘Don’t get bit!’
‘I won’t,’ said Flynn, spitting crumbs.
Henry set the transistor radio on the ground when he came back and they listened to a few songs and then the pips sounded and the news came on. The newsreader read out something about birth dates for the conscription. Tom listened and, to his alarm, heard his own – the same day and month, but a different year.
‘That’s my birthday!’
‘What?’
‘He just said my birthday!’
‘You’re too young.’
‘For what?’
‘To fight.’
‘What if I was old enough?’
Henry shrugged. ‘You’d have to go,’ he said.
‘What if I didn’t want to go?’
Henry looked at him as though he were surprised he could speak. ‘You’d have to.’
‘But what if I have to go one day? What if the war’s still going when I’m old enough?’
‘Well … you’d have to go. If I had anything to say about it. If your country needs you, you have to go.’
Henry flicked away the leafy tea at the bottom of his cup and then looked at Tom as though one or two more questions might be all right. Tom was about to ask another question when Henry suddenly looked up and shouted at Flynn to be careful. Tom looked over at his brother. He didn’t seem in any immediate danger.
‘Come on,’ said Henry, gruffly, after a silence.
When they returned to work Henry felled some more trees that had caught his eye, that he couldn’t bear to leave. All Tom had to do was keep out of the way and paint the end of the log with Henry’s mark and clear the branches from around the log as Henry lopped them so the truck could get in. They kept working until lunch time and then Henry drove them down to where other gangs were having their lunch in a large cleared area where the forest had been stripped back to the bare earth and the smouldering stumps of felled trees sent light-blue smoke into the air. The men squatted near the fires cooking meat, making tea, and smoking. Tom liked being around the timbermen and listening to their filthy speech and their eerie tales of headless convicts and moans and cries in the bush in the dead of night. They smelt of tobacco, grease and tree sap and sometimes told stories of themselves or other men and their battles with giant trees, the breaking of arms, legs, necks and backs. They spoke of women as though they were trees and trees as though they were women until Tom couldn’t tell one smooth limb from another, and they nearly always had grazes on their arms and legs and nearly always gaps in their grins or bright white false teeth. The older men wore braces over their work shirts or singlets and took no cheek from the youngsters.
He wandered around for a while in the cold ashes and charred earth. ‘The surface is fine and powdery,’ he whispered to himself. ‘I can see footprints of my boots … in the fine sandy particles.’
Henry called his name after a while and directed him to a fire and told him to watch out for Flynn and fry up some eggs. Henry strode over to the largest group of men – a Commission gang – and squatted amongst them. He plucked a cigarette from his pocket and straightened it out with his fingers and then lit it.
Tom got the pan, eggs and bread from the truck and set to work. It was hot in the sun after the shade of the trees and the sweat ran down his forehead and into his eyes and as he wiped it away with his forearm he grew more irritated. He saw Flynn wandering around the uprooted bole of a huge tree.
‘Go and sit in the shade!’ Tom shouted to him.
Flynn came over, trailing a stick through the dust. Tom could tell
